The topic of discussion for this
Constitution Monday concerns the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This
discussion is critical in view of the increasing numbers of liberals calling
for more gun control. Why did the Founders consider the “right to keep and bear
arms” as being so important as to enshrine it in the Constitution?
Jimmy Kimmel suggested that the
Founders did not anticipate the new technology that makes guns more lethal in
our day. However, Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal calls the idea a “straw man.”
The Founders did not design the
Constitution so that it would only be applicable in their own day. The rights
they aimed to protect weren’t tied to a specific time or era, but were timeless
and universal.
The Second Amendment was not made up out
of thin air. The Founders saw it as a legal expression of a citizen’s natural
right to self-defense and preservation, and his ability to resist governmental
tyranny.
Stepman did not stop at the above
explanation, but he continued a discussion about the fundamental right to
defend oneself.
Self-defense is among the “God-given
rights” that the Declaration of Independence refers to. These principles are
grounded in Western tradition and are at the cornerstone of our civilization –
though they are increasingly dismissed as radical and “fundamentalist” by some
in the modern media.
If one believes “rights” come from
government, not God or nature, it is easy to see why those like Kimmel believe
this ever-evolving set of rights simply needs to be legally updated from time
to time.
But this is not how the Founders
thought, nor is it what they conceived when they decided to protect the
blessings of liberty for themselves or their posterity….
This logic of self-defense has been at
the heart of recent Supreme Court rulings that have sided with the right to
bear arms.
Stepman continues his discussion
with an explanation about technology and why more gun control will not make
Americans safer. He closes his post by explaining that more gun control has
done little to decrease gun crime.
Americans are simply unwilling to
surrender their God-given rights based on dubious claims that the government
can make us perfectly safe from evil-doers…. So while those on the left … make
passionate pleas for this country to “do something,” like pass gun control to
stop violence, few besides the already-converted are going to buy it.
Even though liberals are slow to
realize it, Americans are not stupid. We can read the news reports about the
many gun deaths in Chicago even though there is strict gun control there. We
can read about the relative safety of Switzerland where every citizen carries a
gun. We can read of the atrocities that have taken place in nations after their
governments took “control” of all the guns. No, Americans are not stupid. More
and more of us want our guns and the right to use them in self-defense.
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